A traditional model for managing personal health includes several phases. These phases typically include wellness and prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.
The wellness and prevention phase typically involves a person a monitoring his/her own health and having periodic check-up visits with a care provider. The diagnosis phase typically involves the care provider determining an ailment of the person when the care provider determines that the patient has a health problem. The care provider can reach the diagnosis by consulting any one or more knowledge sources, such as his/her previous experience and knowledge, consultation with colleague(s), review of print and/or electronic literature, and review of diagnostic tests/procedures. During the treatment phase, the care provider typically determines a treatment plan for the person to address the diagnosis, e.g., to relieve the patient of symptom(s).
In the wellness and prevention phase, it can be difficult for people to monitor their health on a continual, long term basis. For non-limiting example, it can be difficult for people to track factors related to their health, such as exercise and diet. Developing their own health tracking tools can be very time consuming, can overlook one or more factors that would be helpful for a care provider to evaluate in the diagnosis and/or treatment phases, and/or can become so burdensome that people reduce their tracking or abandon the tracking altogether. For another non-limiting example, it can be difficult for people to know ways to maintain and/or improve their health without conducting research and/or consulting a care provider. Such resources can be costly, can be unavailable when a person is interested to learn about them, and/or can only provide generalized advice without taking into account a specific person's capabilities, interests, and daily schedule. For yet another non-limiting example, factors relevant to a person's health can change over time, such as by the person aging, the person undergoing a medically significant event (e.g., becoming pregnant, developing diabetes, breaking an arm, etc.), the person moving geographically such that previously available wellness resources are no longer available and/or new wellness resources are available, and/or the person making progress such that his/her abilities and needs have changed. The person may not even be aware when health factors are changing, such as during the aging process, such that the person may not know to vary his/her wellness and prevention habits. Even if the person is aware that health factors are changing, such as when a person moves to university from home, the person can often be unaware of how to change his/her wellness and prevention habits in view of his/her new circumstances, thereby at least temporarily adversely affecting his/her health.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved systems and methods for wellness, health, and lifestyle planning, tracking, and maintenance.